Mary is a real mother in the order of grace

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart is at the center of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary predicted at Fatima. Cardinal Ratzinger (1) provides a proper context in his theological commentary on the Third Secret of Fatima, published in 2000 (note: the message and full commentary can be found on the Vatican website):

In biblical language, the heart indicates the center of human life, the point where reason, will, temperament and sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the immaculate heart is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect interior unity and therefore sees God.

To be devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat “your will be done” the defining center of one's whole life.

It might be objected that we should not place a human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: imitate me (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9).

In the Apostle they could see concretely what it meant to follow Christ. But from whom might we better learn in every age than from the Mother of the Lord?

It is precisely through devotion to her Immaculate Heart—to her example, obedience, and recourse to her intercession—that we are provided the spiritual help and strength to remain upon those paths. And this help is real! I want to cry out with all my heart that this “Woman clothed in the Sun” is not a symbolic mother but an actual mother in the order of grace. She is a real and actual refuge for sinners.

Source: https://www.markmallett.com/blog/the-refuge-for-our-times/

(1) Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, who became Pope as Benedict XVI in April 2005, was previously Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Roman Curia.